


i think i've seen this film before (and i didn't like the ending)

by couldntlivewithoutyouiguess



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25618267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldntlivewithoutyouiguess/pseuds/couldntlivewithoutyouiguess
Summary: Three times Tony and Ziva fall apart, and one time they fall together. (Tags to Aliyah, Past, Present & Future, Family First, and In the Wind fix-it).
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	i think i've seen this film before (and i didn't like the ending)

**Author's Note:**

> This has been 75% written since last year, but I was inspired to complete it by folklore and this lovely gifset (https://indestinatus.tumblr.com/post/624934294360555520/i-think-ive-seen-this-film-before-so-im-leavin).

2009

“You jeopardized your entire career, and for what?”

For her.

It’s always been her. 

Her brows furrow in disbelief. Like she doesn’t think someone would sacrifice themselves, put everything on the line for her. Like she doesn’t deserve it. 

Surely, she knows him better than that by now. For all his flaws, numerous that they are, he’s loyal to a fault. He would take a bullet for any member of their team, no questions asked. 

And that includes her, but it’s more than that. It’s been more than that for months, years even, and now’s probably not the best time for him to come to terms with that. 

Not when she’s lacing into him with a level of vitriol he didn’t know she was capable of. 

Not when he’s just shot her boyfriend, to death, in her living room. 

Certainly not when she expertly pins him to the ground and points her very much loaded gun at his chest. 

And when he meets her eyes, he’s terrified. They’re somehow both blazing with anger (not a great look when his life is literally in her hands) and completely blank. 

He’s spent a fair amount of time looking into her eyes. Glinting during flirtatious banter, glazed over after 48 sleepless hours, prone to eye-rolls after an inappropriate comment (almost always by him). But this woman, and her eyes, are a stranger to him. 

He knows he fucked up, to say the least. He wouldn’t have been dragged across the world, to face the wrath of Eli David, if he hadn’t crossed several lines. But he’ll maintain that, while he didn’t act perfectly, he did what had to be done, given the situation. Rivkin was out of control, and he wouldn’t have stopped until he was dead. Kill or be killed, and all of that. 

Ziva, though? That’s more complicated. He’s broken something there, irreparably. He knows what she’d say. That he broke her trust by secretly meeting with Michael, by coming to her apartment that night. To a woman without a country, with divided loyalties, trust has outsized importance. 

All he wanted to do, still wants to do, is protect her. He knows she doesn’t need protection. 

But they’ve had a special bond since the day she sauntered into the bullpen demanding to speak to Gibbs. She’s gone from a source of intrigue, the silver-tongued Israeli in cargo pants, to, arguably, his best friend. She became his confidante that summer he was thrust into the role of team leader, movie nights turned into limbs entwined and his most deep-seated fears whispered into her ear. They shouldered the burden of Jenny’s death together, those dissipated days in L.A. becoming her swan song. And they shared a million other little moments along the way, born of forced proximity and shocking emotional candor for two incredibly guarded people. 

Sometime, at a moment he can never quite pin down and to his own surprise, he’d fallen in love with her. Her butchered American idioms, her ability to reinvent herself, her levity after a life filled with so much darkness, her deep care and compassion and empathy. To be frank, he didn’t think he was capable of love. He’d closed himself off to all emotional attachments after how his dad had treated him. But she’d proven him wrong, or so he thought. 

But now she’s quite literally closed the door in his face. She’s left him lying on the concrete, chest heaving and heart racing. He loves her, and she couldn’t care if he lives or dies. Probably prefers him dead, to be completely honest. 

As they fly back to D.C., one short, he replays her last words to him over and over. 

“I guess I’ll never know.”

So much between them that will remain unknown and unknowable. And he didn’t even get to say goodbye. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2013

Of course, he finds her there. After months of searching the better part of the Middle East and North Africa, where else would she be but the house where she was born? Her home. 

But this isn’t her home anymore. Maybe it was one day, back when she could have been a ballerina, or an artist, or anything she wanted to be. Before her father molded her into a killer and then left her in the desert to die. He seethes, thinking of the pain and suffering Eli inflicted on her, in life and in death. He’s glad the bastard is dead. 

But now, she has a new home. Yes, she will always be Israeli in her heart, but she’s an American now—both by citizenship and by much stronger bonds. It’s the thing he probably most admires about her. That from all the pain of being abandoned, of being tortured for months on end in ways he doesn’t even want to think about, she built something beautiful. She started over and built a life for herself in D.C., built a family. He’s never had that kind of courage. 

What he learned that summer he thought she was dead is that his home isn’t a place. It’s wherever she is. Right now, it’s here, in the shadows of the olive trees and the wide-open windows where the sun highlights her wild curls and casts the dark circles under her eyes into sharp relief. It’s been the sand of the Somali desert, chapped lips and truth serum and confessions he never meant to make. It’s been between the sheets of her bed, a fan lazily turning above their heads, that summer when Gibbs fled to Mexico and they found solace in each other, strangers and lovers. 

Summer has always been their season. 

“I just want you to come home with me,” he begs. If the tears in his eyes weren’t evidence enough, desperation threads his voice. 

Her eyes narrow and darken, walls going back up. She responds immediately. “I don’t think that’s a good—.” It’s her elegy. The mourning of something that sort of was and could have been and, now, assuredly won’t be.

He tries again. “I can change with you.”

But it’s the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. This time, she just stares at him, lips parted and eyes wide in a flash of what seems like thankfulness before she slips back into implacability. 

It’s true. 

He knows he can change because he has changed, thanks to her. He barely recognizes the person he used to be, and he’s better for it. He’s kinder, more compassionate, more open, and more respectful. He’s a better field agent, a better friend, a better son, and a better…whatever he is to her. 

Without breaking eye contact, he brings her hand to his mouth and places a gentle kiss on her knuckles, feather-light. Even if she can’t love herself right now, he loves every single part of her. Maybe that will be enough. 

But it’s not. He tries and tries to get her to change her mind. He tells her he’s fighting for her. Fighting to bring her back to him, for good. There’s gratitude in her eyes, but also pain and sadness that he wishes he could wipe away as easily as her tears. 

She’s broken, sure, but so he is. So are all of them—their little band of misfits, a family built on murder and tragedy but surprisingly solid for its macabre foundation. Ziva has always been a force of nature—unstoppable, fierce, and wild. But she’s never wrought the destruction she believes she has. 

But his efforts to convince her of that—that she’s helped, that’s she’s healed—are both valiant and of no avail. She’s built herself up in her head as someone who doesn’t need or deserve anything other than to be swallowed by her own sadness. 

And so, he does the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. He leaves. 

Tangled up in her that morning, he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to do it. Unlike their early, nearly animalistic days, their coming together is soft and sweet and almost somber. He tries to catalogue every inch of her body, the sound of her voice, cast them in amber in case he never sees her again. And he very well never might, a thought that nearly rends him in two. He tried living without her, and he couldn’t. And if anything, his feelings for her—his love for her—has only gotten stronger. 

But once he’s exhausted every trick in the book, every method of cajolement and enticement, he has to respect her wishes. His last glance of her is on the tarmac, alone, heaving with sobs. Not exactly the ending he was anticipating. 

And it’s only as the plane takes off that he lets the wave of grief wash over him. 

It’s as if she died, but it’s worse. If she’d died, she wouldn’t have left him on purpose. While he doesn’t want to live in a world where there’s no Ziva David, over time, it might have been easier to heal. To move on. To let himself find some tiny piece of happiness again. 

But this way, leaving her to her demons? He feels both betrayed and like he’s betraying her. That maybe he should have stayed behind despite her protestations. But he knows he made the right call, even if it feels like his heart has been ripped out of his chest. Because yeah, he can change with her, and support her, and even love her, but he can’t fix her. That she has to do herself. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2017 

It’s rule number three. Don’t believe what you’re told; always double check. And once the haze of grief subsides a little, he thinks more clearly. 

He runs his fingers subconsciously through sleeping Tali’s curls and thinks. He thinks about a lot of things, but specifically about how this whole thing is fishy. No body. Or, to be more precise, a body burned so badly that no DNA testing could be done. Tali arriving with not a scratch on her. And most perplexingly, the go-bag, complete with the photo of he and Ziva in Paris and a scarf that smells like her. (He refuses to wash it). 

A Mossad assassin, an NCIS agent, and all-around badass ninja dies in a house fire, while a two-year-old emerges unscathed, with a bag packed with her favorite stuffed animal. Kelev is like a third member of the family these days. Tali often clings to him when she cries, and he can’t blame her. It’s her last piece of familiarity, of home. 

He tells the team they’re moving to Paris, and they do. He rents a cute little apartment in the Fourth Arrondisement, right near Notre Dame, and he shows Tali the towering cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Luxembourg Gardens. She’s awed by their beauty—“Aba, pretty!”—and he’s awed by hers. The innocence of a child is something he never thought he’d experience firsthand. But it’s something he’d never give up in a million years now that he’s got it. 

He gets a desk job with Interpol, his long years of service with NCIS useful in liaising and providing insight into the American government. He enrolls Tali in a local preschool, so she starts learning French and confusing him even more. He can barely keep up with the mix of Hebrew, English, and gibberish that comes out of her mouth. 

But he hangs on her every word like she hangs the moon and the sun and the stars. She’s the light of his life, and he gets a white-hot flash of anger every time he wonders how Ziva could have kept her from him. He missed her first word, her first steps, her first breath. He was robbed, and he didn’t deserve to be. 

He has to sublimate that anger and be rational. It’s somehow a lot harder to be angry at Ziva if she’s dead—some remnant of some Catholic school education, he imagines. But the more he thinks about it, the more he’s convinced she can’t possibly be. Dead, that is. 

But then that raises the real question—where is she? Is she hiding? Is she in danger? Is she just avoiding him? The latter seems like quite the lengths to go to—especially in abandoning her daughter. While he never would have guessed, in a million years, that Ziva would keep their child from him, he still likes to think he knows her pretty well. And the Ziva he knows would never willingly give up being a mother, not when she thought she could never have children. No matter where her head was at, he can’t bring himself to believe that she would just leave Tali if she had a choice. 

And so he wracks his brain. What could possibly be so dangerous that she would tell no one, except possibly Orli? They’ve all faced quite a lot of threats, but he can’t fathom one that would make her take such drastic measures. 

One day, about a month after they move to Paris, it dawns on him. Or perhaps it’s just a harebrained thought—he’ll see. But if Ziva is one thing, she’s loyal. To her family, and especially to her sister. 

The opera house in Cairo where Ziva and Tali went every year, on Tali’s birthday. November 12. There’s just the smallest chance, the most remote of possibilities, that she could be there this year, honoring her sister. 

Hanging on to that faint glimmer of hope is what gets him through the difficult months, the adjustments for both him and Tali. 

Eventually, they settle into their routine, and Tali gets more comfortable with him, and all is well. But he’s just biding his time until November. In late October, he books a ticket—first class fare to Cairo, because he’s learned from experience that traveling alone with a two-year-old is horror movie-esque. 

“We’re gonna go on a trip, Tali!” He tells her the night before they’re scheduled to leave. “Have you ever heard of Egypt?” Her brow furrows in concentration and befuddlement. She’s worldly, sure, for her age, but not quite that much. 

“Well, there’s gonna be big, cool pyramids, and we’re gonna take an airplane, and stay in a fancy hotel. It’ll be fun.” She just continues to stare at him blankly, with those big brown eyes that look exactly like her mother’s. She nods and smiles. This perfect little person, who trusts him completely and implicitly and is dependent on him for every need. It’s both extremely gratifying and bone-chillingly terrifying. 

Less than 24 hours later, they’re on a flight to Cairo. He reaches into his jacket pocket to clutch Ziva’s necklace, a ritual of sorts he developed on flights, but remembers that it now hangs around Tali’s neck. Instead, he pulls his daughter closer to him and strokes her back as they land, whispering reassuring sounds in her ear as she wails. 

It’s November 11, and he can hardly sleep. The small opera house where she used to take Tali is off the beaten path, and it closed three years ago. However, the building is still there, according to his Google Maps inquiry. 

In a moment of lucidity, he’s wildly angry at himself. He can’t believe he dragged his daughter halfway across the world, just when she was starting to get used to Paris, because of some delusion that Ziva’s not dead and she’s going to be in Cairo, of all places. He’s disrupted their lives, and for what? 

But they’re here now, and he’s got to see this through to its completion. So when Tali wakes up around seven, after a fitful night’s sleep in the hotel crib, he dresses her and they set out. They eat some shakshouka from a place around the corner, and Tali loves it, not that he’s surprised. Pushing Tali around in her carriage through the streets, a map balanced precariously in one hand, he’s struck by the vibrancy of the city, how life permeates every corner and alleyway. He’s lost in his own thoughts, willing himself not to hope, when they arrive at the front door of the opera house.

It’s a little dilapidated, sure, but not dangerously so. He looks around to make sure no one’s watching and opens the front door. 

The red seats and the embellished ceilings are perfectly preserved. He barely has to imagine singers and dancers on the stage, a young Ziva and her sister happily ensconced in the velvet seats, paying rapt attention to Puccini or Verdi or whatever was playing. A more carefree Ziva, before the violence and caprice of the world threatened to break her. 

He’s in a sort of trance when he hears a gasp and the cocking of a gun. Out from behind the curtain she steps out, hair shorter but unmistakably, conclusively, her. 

Breathing. Alive. In front of him. 

A soft smile plays across her face as she lowers her gun and places it in her waistband. 

“You found me.”

All he can do is nod. 

“I knew that it was a long shot, but that maybe you would remember, maybe you would come, but I was not sure if you would want to see me.” 

He just stares blankly, unable to form any coherent thoughts. How many times has he lain awake in bed at night, considered what he’d say to her if he ever saw her again? And now that she’s here, in front of him, he can’t even make his mouth form words. 

“Ima?” So soft, he can barely hear it coming from the carriage. 

And that’s all it takes to make Ziva come running towards them, tears streaming down her face. Ignoring him, she unbuckles Tali’s seatbelt and picks her up in one smooth motion, cupping Tali’s head in her hand as she rocks her back and forth. 

“Yes, Tali. Ima’s here.”

For a second, they can forget that they’re in an abandoned opera house in the middle of Cairo because it’s everything they want and deserve and should have had years ago if they weren’t so stubborn. 

And then they’re careening back to reality. As she clutches Tali so tightly to her chest he’s not sure if she’s getting air, she locks eyes with him. 

“I’ll always find you, Ziva.”

“I…I…cannot stay long. It is a risk for me to be here, even now. There…there is a terrible woman after me, Tony, and she is trying to kill me and everyone I love. I do not know who she is- I do not even know her name. But she does not know about Tali. She cannot know about Tali. That is why…that is why I gave her to you.” She looks at him, waiting for a response. Waiting for absolution. 

He’s not about to give it. That’s the most opaque explanation, the most clandestine, covert bullshit he’s ever heard. She’s alive, and he’s not about to let her leave, ever again.

Then, the questions start tumbling out of him, and he can’t stop. “I don’t understand. How come you didn’t tell me? Tell Gibbs? Tell the team? How come you didn’t tell me about Tali in the first place? How could you keep her from me?”

At the sound of her name, Tali perks up in her mother’s arms. “Shh, tateleh, rest,” Ziva intones. Tali complies, burying her face in Ziva’s shoulder. He sees Ziva glance downward, to the bandage on her daughter’s knee. While it might seem perfectly commonplace, Tali adamantly refused to wear bandages. But this one was cut, however crudely, into a heart; he’d found that if it was “pretty,” he could get her to put it on. Just another one of their trial-by-fire moments. 

“You got her to wear a bandaid?” Ziva asks incredulously. A seeming mundanity in the midst of all this chaos. 

“Yeah, just another thing I’ve had to learn. On my own. But she’s a wonderful kid.” 

“I am sorry for everything that I have done. I can see how much I have hurt you. But this is the way it has to be. I have to do this on my own.”

“I’m not letting you leave us. Me. Your daughter.”

“You do not have a choice,” she fires back. “Do you think this is how I want it to be? I will contact you when it is safe. When I have killed her. Until then, you must take care of Tali.”

He’s too overwhelmed to put up much of a fight. 

“Give her to me,” he demands.

Ziva hikes Tali up on her hip, brushes the curls back from her face with her hand. “Tali, Ima has to go now. But I will see you soon, okay, my love?” Tali nods obediently, grabbing for Ziva’s necklace. “Ima bye-bye?” 

“Ima bye-bye,” Ziva confirms, placing a kiss on the top of Tali’s head and handing her over to Tony.

“Ani ohev otach, Ziva.”

“I love you too, Tony.” 

They’re a tragedy, really. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2020

She is seated at her old desk, head buried in her hands, when she hears it.

It had been an exhausting few days. Few years, really. While Gibbs had killed Sahar, there were still some loose ends to wrap up. The most crucial, of course, being her son, Phineas. Who now, in some perversity, Gibbs was seeking to adopt. 

They had finally gotten things in order, and she was taking a moment to rest. For years she had been on her own, constantly attuned to her surroundings, unwilling to relax for a moment. Perhaps that was why her anxiety had so worsened. 

But as Gibbs had assured her, that was all over now. While she still mourned Adam, the latest casualty of Sahar’s bloodlust, she could not help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief. Now, she could go back to Tony and Tali. Her family.

Mixed with the relief was sheer terror. She had left Tali nearly three years ago, seeing her only for that one brief moment in Cairo. And she had been separated from Tony nearly twice as long, since he left her in Israel almost seven years ago. 

They had been the hardest years of her life, which was certainly saying something. She had not realized how much of a calming, steadying, soothing presence he had been in her life until he was no longer there. It was if she had been cast out into a storm, to weather the swells alone. 

And yet, after all the hurt she had put him through over the years, he had still taken Tali, no questions asked. He had put a heart-shaped Band-Aid on her knee. He clearly was the father she knew he always could be, even under less-than-ideal circumstances. 

Most fathers had time to prepare—but he had always been one to make the best of situations. To receive a child he didn’t know existed, a child who knew a different life with a different parent in a different country, and still be able to adapt, said quite a lot about him. 

He had always been the best of men, whether he’d realized it or not. Whether she deserved him was another question entirely. 

“Hello, Ziva.” She jerked her head up so quickly it almost snapped backwards. It could not be. It was a dream, like the many she had had, both asleep and awake, that had sustained her these last six years. 

But it was Anthony DiNozzo, Jr., in the flesh, in the squad room. How many hours had they spent here, mere feet from each other, bantering and bickering and falling in love? She spent more time here than in any so-called home she’d ever had. This was where she had found her family. She had become a daughter to Gibbs, a sister to McGee, some sort of weird cousin to Palmer, and…something to Tony. They had beared their souls to each other, so he had said. 

Now, he was here. 

He seemed disoriented; granted, he hadn’t been here for even longer than her, upwards of three years. He was older, to be sure. (Taller? Hotter? It called her back to a different time, before Somalia, when they danced around each other like it was a game.) 

There was gray around his temples and more lines around his eyes, but it was the same Tony. 

Holding his hand, and hiding behind his leg, was Tali. Though she’d seen pictures and seen her from a distance, she had not been this close to her daughter since Cairo. What first struck her was how she had grown —no longer a baby or toddler, but a child. Nearly 5 years old, ready for kindergarten. How much she had missed of her life. 

But why had they come? How had they known it was safe? She had not contacted them since that evening a few months ago when they had killed the woman they thought was Sahar. She had been about to bring a building down on herself to ensure that Sahar never found out about Tali. There were some things that were too good and too precious for this world, to ever be harmed by someone like Sahar, and Tali was at the top of the list. 

She took a deep breath. “Hello, Tony. I see that you found me again.”

“Not any easy woman to track down,” he quipped back. “Gibbs gave me a call yesterday that you were here, and I should come. Would have preferred it come from you, but beggars can’t be choosers.” He shrugged his shoulders. 

“Tali, say hello to your Ima.” He prodded her. 

Tali buried her face in the back of Tony’s knee. “Tali, remember what we talked about on the plane. You remember your Ima, right?” He tried again.

She shook her head vigorously, burrowing her face even deeper. Ziva couldn’t tell if she was just being stubborn (ran in the family) or if she really did not remember her. She had ensured that Tali, from her birth, knew who Tony was. And he could not return the same courtesy? 

“Tali.” His voice was firm. Tentatively, Tali emerges from behind Tony. 

“Hi, Ima.” The sound of her daughter’s voice, reedy and high-pitched, after all this time, nearly made her fall apart. 

She stood up from the desk and slowly approached Tali, crouching down to be eye-level with her. 

“Hello, my beautiful girl. I am so very happy to see you, and I will never leave you again. Okay?” She looks up at Tony as she finished, tears glistening her eyes. The assurance is for both of them. Despite the innumerable mistakes she’s made (they’ve made), this is her family. He nods briefly, eyes unreadable. 

She extends her arms hesitantly, preparing to be rebuffed by her daughter again. Instead, Tali steps into her embrace, and she wraps her arms tightly around her, picking her up and propping her on her hip in one practiced motion. She will not still be able to do this for long, given how quickly her daughter is growing, and she intends to make the most of every opportunity. 

She runs her free hand absently through Tali’s curls, detangling them out of habit. She locks eyes with Tony, hoping her eyes can convey the multitudes of grief and gratitude and hope that her brain contains but cannot articulate at this moment. 

And perhaps they do, because, to her surprise, he strides over to her and wraps her (and Tali) in an irrepressibly tight hug of his own, kissing the top of her head. Even though she cannot see it, she can feel that he’s smiling.

Undoubtedly, they have a lot to work through. They have been apart for six years and have both lived several lifetimes during that time. She knows she needs to apologize for so many things, and she is sure he has quite a lot to say to her. But for the first time she can remember, she is not worried. She is just perfectly, incandescently happy. 

Because they will figure it out. They always do.


End file.
